For many Internet marketers, being
able to design and upload high- quality websites is becoming as necessary
as using a spreadsheet or word processing program. This overview of popular
website creation products can help you identify which ones best meet your
needs.

* Arachnophilia 4.0 ( http://www.arachnoid.com
) lets you view HTML changes as they are made, making the design process
run smoothly. Although some users complain that the interface is
clunky, what they may really be objecting to is that it requires you to
know about HTML.

But the programmer who wrote Arachnophilia
says that is how it is intended to be used: as a tool to help coders write
better HTML. The program is intended to teach and to be easily modified
and improved by the individual user to suit his needs. For example, there
is a feature called Beautify/Analyze HTML that goes through the code a
user produces and cleans it up by analyzing the
document's syntax for errors.

Arachnophilia also has helpful features
such as a spell check. The best part of all? It's free.

Chris O'Donnell maintains a web page
for the Libertarian Party of Virginia at: http://www.lpva.com . He appreciates
Arachnophilia's viewable HTML changes, which help him learn more about
how HTML works. "I'm a geek at heart," he says. "I like understanding
what is actually happening with the code."

"Arachnophilia is a full-featured
HTML development environment with built-in wizards for frames, tables and
more, producing clean HTML that displays properly on the three browsers
I've tested," he says.

* Macromedia's Dreamweaver ( http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/
) is the program of choice for many programmers because it has excellent
visual HTML editing capabilities: As changes are made to the HTML code,
the results are immediately viewable in an open browser.

"The flexibility and ease of use
of this product lets me create and edit sites quickly and easily," says
John Davis, editor of the gaming industry newsletter Ping-News (site to
be launched next month at http://www.ping-news.com ). "The best part is
how easy it is to create a specific look and feel throughout a site."

* A major strength of Microsoft
FrontPage ( http://www.microsoft.com ) is that it verifies links and allows
sitewide find-and-replace. This is useful, for example, if you have to
change a product price across an entire site. If you're already working
with Microsoft Office, the familiar Microsoft interface enhances usability.

Predesigned templates let users with
less design savvy create professional-looking sites. That's helpful for
George Matyjewicz, the chief marketing officer for GAP Enterprises ( http://www.gapent.com
). He uses Microsoft Front Page, he says, because "it is still the best
product on the market to manage website design and to control pages."

* HoTMetaL Pro ( http://www.softquad.com/products/hotmetal/
) now comes with an excellent cascading style sheets editor. This allows
you to easily add fonts, colors and spacing to a Web document. And then
when you make changes to the style sheets, all the pages with that style
sheet are automatically updated.

Though it now comes with Java, ActiveX
and dynamic HTML, HoTMetaL started as a tag-based text editor. That means
it creates straightforward HTML, which is easy to troubleshoot when there
are problems in appearance between different browsers or monitor resolutions.

With HoTMetaL's what-you-see-is-what-you-get
interface, you can use its built-in browser to see what your Web pages
will look like as you create them. But with HoTMetaL and other website
design tools, you should still review your work with other browsers, including
older versions, says designer Dave Alden, who's currently building fishing
site BigFishTales.com. "This allows you to see the site as different users
will see it," he says.

* Microsoft Publisher 2000
( http://www.microsoft.com ) excels at creating template-based sites using designs
that come with the program. Users can also create designs from scratch using a
familiar Microsoft interface. Small business owners will appreciate that pre-existing designs can be
used to create other documents--such as letterhead, business cards and
newsletters--that match their website designs.

* BBEdit from BareBones Software
( http://www.bbedit.com/ ) is best for users who know how to code and
use another product for graphics, because it is less suited for graphics
work.

But with BBEdit, you can easily insert
blocks of code into the HTML editor, which some users may appreciate.
"I learned how to code by hand, so BBEdit is perfect for me
because it allows me to write all my own code or use its automated code,"
says Laura Reilein, senior web producer at Cox Interactive Media
( http://www.cimedia.com/ ). Sites Cox has created include Access Atlanta
( http://www.accessatlanta.com ) and Rich's Department store ( http://www.richsonline.com/
).

Though it's not comprehensive, this
list does represent some of the most popular website creation tools,
according to Internet marketers who are actively using the products.
Remember to make a list of what features you want, what pricing
you can afford, and your own level of technical comfort as you set forth
to evaluate these tools for yourself.

By Shannon Kinnard

Shannon Kinnard is president of email
marketing agency Idea Station ( http://www.ideastation.com ) and
author of "Marketing with Email"( http://www.marketingwithemail.com
).

SiteAid is a complete HTML Editing
tool that contains all the necessary components for building
and maintaining a web site. Included with the program are complete
Help files for "Program Help", "HTML Help", "CSS Help" and
for the beginner a "Tutorial". Functionally includes editors to
simplify the mundane tasks for Frames, Tables, Forms, Style Sheets,
Scripts and more plus a spell checker to finish the job.

xSite is a web development tool with
a difference. It borrows many of the features seen in other RAD
(rapid application development) packages available today and implements
them in a web design tool. Features such as syntax highlighting,
a Tag Object Inspector, Palette toolbar and other RAD features
are all to be found in xSite.